It's early in the year and once again people are flocking to gyms across the world, ready and mostly willing to start working on a New Year's Resolution. This resolution tends to be about losing weight, getting "in shape", becoming "toned" and so forth. As I've watched these people come, and eventually fade out over the years, I've always felt a sense of loss about them and their failure. They took the initiative, had the courage, made a decision and paid out hard earned money only to ultimately fail. They didn't fail because they're lazy (lazy people don't darken the doors of gyms) and they didn't fail because they didn't have great goals (winners and losers have the same goals). They failed because they simply did not know what they were doing. To be frank, they had no clue and I'll let you in on a little secret - almost everyone at the gym is training ineffectively and wasting a lot of time. As harsh as all of this sounds it is the truth, I'm just keeping it real.
Oddly enough, the one thing we share in common, the body human, most humans know very little about. I'll skip my thoughts on the "why" of this but the reality is very few people know how their body actually works, how it processes and uses food for nutrients or which nutrients are important, why the body needs motion and exercise, why the body needs chronic, sufficient and rhythmic sleep patterns or why hydration status is important to all things related to health. If you dont know how your body works, how could you possibly make it better?
Joining a gym is a great first step, it really is, but as part of the big picture from a high altitude and wide angle perspective, it's just one part of the answer to becoming stronger, healthier, more energetic and more resistant to acute sickness and chronic disease. Everything works together. You can't pick and choose what you think is important and work on that. Your rationalizations mean nothing. Working against design is insanity. You have to work on all of it at the same time. How you feel about this reality makes no difference whatsoever. Quit playing those games in your head and heart. They aren't working for you.
If that sounds like too much at once, it is, and it is because people look at eating the elephant whole without taking any small bites. You have to take the time to PLAN your week and define and implement small changes for the better within activity, nutrition, hydration, sleep and stress attenuation. Think in terms of creating and refining a week's worth of small, daily changes that if repeated consistently will get you where you want to go.
Build the week - Win the week - Tweak the week - Repeat.
You will mostly likely need help with all of the above for a time. Someone to teach you correct exercise technique and to help you program your exercise/activity for the week. Someone to help you get back to the basics of buying and preparing real food and setting up that part of your week for success. Someone to help you understand why it's important to get sufficient sleep day in and day out and to help you identify external and internal stressors and barriers and how to attend to those so they can be reduced, or eliminated.
The above is a process, a journey - not an event with an ending. You have to internalize this if you haven't yet. If you don't cross this bridge, you will NOT achieve success on the other side, and if you do it will be but fleeting.
Know this from the outset. Perfection is not the goal - weekly progress is the goal. There are no quick fixes for anything that is truly important and worthwhile. You're going to have to get perfectly honest with yourself and see your life for what it truly is right now, that you are in complete control of that life, that your decisions got you here and then take steps to create a better life than the one you have now.
It is your personal health and well-being, the very life you live every day and those you live it with, and it is definitely worth change for the better. Every change, big or small, starts with a single decision. Make the best first decision. Find the right mentor and go to work.
The Five Steps of Change
Step 1: Awareness - I need to change
Step 2: Desire - Identify your "why"
Step 3: Knowledge - Build the Week
Step 4: Action - Win the Week
Step 5: Perseverance - Tweak the Week
Repeat Steps 4 and 5 = Success
Let's do this.